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Henry Morgenthau, The German Character
Five chapters from Morgenthau’s book, Germany is our Problem, here published with an introductory note by Ellopos. Emphasis, in bold or italic letters, by Ellopos. Complete book in print.
52 Pages
Page 6
More was expected of the Dawes plan of August, 1924, drawn up by a committee of specialists headed by the Chicago banker and future Vice President. This program assigned specific German revenues to reparations and established Allied commissions and an agent general in Berlin to supervise their collection. But these officials had no authority to interfere with German trade or finance, public or private—a committee of Allied jurists that year offered a formal opinion that any such interference would be illegal.
Not all Germany's preparations could be kept secret, even in this earliest stage of the Reich's march along "the road back." Under the treaty, one of the three occupied Rhineland zones was to be evacuated in 1925 if Germany had lived up to her obligations. On January 5, the Allied governments sent a note to Berlin declaring the zone would not be evacuated because of these specific treaty violations: 1. Failure to demilitarize factories 2. Reconstitution of the general staff 3. Enlistment of short-term recruits 4. Failure to reorganize the police 5. Retention of surplus property
The most serious of these defaults was the first. Trained soldiers and clever strategists are not so dangerous if they have no equipment. But the existence of a powerful industrial machine lent strength to each of the other potential war forces in Germany.
Instead of dealing with the factories which were not demilitarized, the Allies staged one of those full dress international conferences which did so much between wars for the business of selected resorts and so little for the peace of the world. This one was held at Locarno in October, 1925. It was supposed to settle forever the then boundaries of Germany on the west—but not the east— and to be a triumph of co-operation because Germany was treated as an equal. A month later, still under the influence of what was called admiringly the Locarno spirit, the Allies began evacuating the first Rhineland zone.
Cf. H. Arendt: totalitarianism reduces men to impersonal natural forces * German philosophers in support of Nazism * Beethoven and Mauthausen * The Superior Race of Germans * Kalergi, European Spirit must Precede Europe's Political Unification * La Construction de l'Europe selon Jean Monnet * Plan Fouchet * Mitterrand and Kohl urge European Political Union * Il Manifesto di Ventotene
